Mike Monson kept 'em entertained, at Williams Arena, in clubs, schools and beyond

The first decade of Williams Arena madness for men's basketball started in the winter of 1971-72 and put pressure on the performers to keep it on rolling.

Jim Brewer was a junior big man of excellence and an Olympian to be in 1972, when the Gophers won their first Big Ten basketball championship since 1937.

Mark Olberding and Mychal Thompson arrived together as a tall twosome in 1974-75, then Olberding followed coach Bill Musselman to the American Basketball Association after that season.

Thompson became the star in the middle, and then it was up to Kevin McHale to succeed him in that starring role, and then it was Randy Breuer, the towering center on another Big Ten championship team in 1982.

Large sneakers that each of these future NBAers had to fill, but they weren't facing the highest level of pressure for a Gopher of that era.

That challenge befell Mike Monson, a student at the university and a member of the pep band. He was tasked to replace George Schauer as the centerpiece for the Gophers' pregame show in the fall of 1974.

Schauer was moving on as a ball-handling wizard — "Crazy George" could have basketballs spinning in a half-dozen places — and Monson saw an opening.

He went to Musselman with this talent: The ability to juggle multiple basketballs while riding a unicycle.

"His folks had a house with a long, narrow hallway,'' said Stacy Monson, Mike's wife. "He had a unicycle as a kid and would zip up and down that hallway all the time."

Musselman would be 31 when he coached his first game for the Gophers against North Dakota on Dec. 1, 1971. He had been 24 when hired as the head coach at tiny Ashland University in Ohio. He introduced the pregame show there, trying to bring a Harlem Globetrotters vibe to college hoops.

The Muss brought in late signees from junior colleges — Clyde Turner, Ron Behagen, Bobby Nix — to the Gophers, and he also brought in Schauer from Ohio to be featured in the pregame show.

George had a uniform and a scholarship, and actually scored one basket, producing a roar for the ages in Williams Arena.

Monson didn't play, but he did ride that unicycle while juggling, helping to make up for the loss of Crazy George.

"Bill also gave Mike career advice," Stacy said. "He said, 'Accounting? No, you should be a gym teacher. You'd be great.'"

Which Mike Monson became, for four decades in elementary schools in the Wayzata district. And in summers, he was fully booked for kids' camps and other events with his unicycling, juggling, magic tricks — and for minimal financial reward.

Monson died last month at 69, nearly four years after being diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia, a disease that takes away the ability to communicate.

"My feeling is that it was coming on for a few years before Mike was officially diagnosed," Stacy said. "He had been changing, his thoughts were becoming disorganized, but he never turned angry … which can be the case with this horrible disease.

"He was always 'Nice Guy Mike,' wearing his white T-shirt, sweatpants and tennis shoes. And he still was the pickiest eater in the world. He ate 'plain' hamburgers."

Being Musselman's juggling unicyclist was not Monson's lone source of notoriety. He was also the drummer for four decades with The Liars (eventually Blue Liars), a punk band formed with Jim Fuller, Brian Wilson and Marc Partridge (and including Susan Thompson) out of Kappa Sigma fraternity at the University of Minnesota.

"I believe Mike was the best drummer in this area," Fuller said. "Other bands felt that way, too. They would bring in Mike for special events. And he would flip those sticks to show off his juggling talent."

So why The Liars?

"Because we never told the truth in our lives from the stage," Fuller said. "I'd say, 'Here's a song written by Billy Joel,' and then we'd play one of our original creations."

Bill Musselman died in 2000 at 59. Much of him lives on in his son, Eric, a side character in the pregame show at Williams Arena from kindergarten through the third grade, a coach of many stops, and now doing excellent work at Arkansas.

"My father thought the world of Mike," Eric said Tuesday. "To this day, that routine was the most entertaining routine that was ever done in college basketball.

"My dad, he loved Mike on the unicycle so much that when he was coaching the Reno Bighorns in the Western League [in 1978-79], he would fly out Mike on weekends to entertain.

"Crazy George and Mike, those were key guys for him with the Gophers."